from Psychotherapy to Awareness

Sigmund Freud and Carl Yung did not invent psychotherapy. All cultural traditions always had their healers and offered their healing rituals. We have all heard about the philosophy schools of ancient Greece and India, the cult of the dead of Oceania, plant-medicine ceremonies of South and Meso-American traditions, holy communion in Christianity, haj' in Islam, fast and prayer across various cultures, etc. In a sense, every activity and every institution we choose to devote our attention and service to defines us in terms of how we grow and learn as human beings. In the 20th century, a huge surge in practices aimed to provide for a person's individuality as an autonomous unit responsible for their own needs and desires. Schools of psychology emerged in numbers and catered to what they defined as the human heart and brain, leaving the matters of spirit to institutions of a different kind. Today, more than a century and a half since Freud, we are still trying to define ways in which healing and growth can happen.

It seems that for a therapeutic process to incur long-term changes, a person needs to be willing to take responsibility for his or her own being. It takes time to start seeing from a different angle. Change is experienced differently by different people. Some people go through an active search phase. For others, a feeling of agency is not a factor that plays as big of a role, and the driving force behind their journey is experienced as an objective physical reality to which they gradually accommodate. No matter the reason behind one's journey, the latter can’t be accelerated (nor can it be put on hold) by force. Awareness appears to be the only factor given a certain degree of personal leverage.